Get help with sharing to disc in Final Cut Pro X, Motion, or Compressor

When sharing to DVD or Blu-ray disc from Final Cut Pro X, Motion or Compressor isn’t working as expected, try these procedures to successfully burn your disc.

If an alert appears while sharing to DVD or Blu-ray disc

If you're using an external optical drive to burn DVD and Blu-ray discs, you might encounter an alert and your disc might not be successfully burned. When this happens, try the following:

Shut down your Mac and disconnect all the USB cables connecting the optical drive to your Mac. Reconnect the cables, turn your Mac back on, and try burning the disc again.

If your optical drive requires a separate power supply, make sure the power supply is plugged into a power source.

If your drive uses two USB cables to connect to your Mac, make sure to connect both cables. When playing back from the drive, one cable might provide sufficient power. However, burning a DVD or Blu-ray disc requires more power, so make sure to connect both cables.

If your hard drive doesn't have enough disk space

Your Mac needs enough hard disk space to accommodate the video file to successfully burn a disc. Make sure your Mac has enough available hard disk space if the any of the following occur during burning:

Alerts appear stating "There was an error burning your disc. Please check to see if your boot volume has sufficient space" or "Finishing: Could not create the DVD. Please check to see if your boot volume has sufficient space."

The disc burning process slows down between 57 and 64 percent complete, and the application indicates it might take several hours to finish burning the disc.

If your Mac has enough hard drive space, try using a different type of disc. For best results, use a BD-R disc or an unused BD-RE disc. If you need to use a BD-RE disc that contains data, use Finder to erase the disc.

In Finder, Control-click on the mounted BD-RE disc and choose "Erase Rewritable Disc current name of BD-RE disc."

Click Erase when prompted. All data on the disc will be lost.

Once the disc is erased, try burning it again in Final Cut Pro X, Motion, or Compressor.

If sharing to DVD or Blu-ray stops at 66% complete in Final Cut Pro X

If the sharing process stops at 66% complete in the Final Cut Pro X Background Tasks window, it might or might not be accompanied by an alert. Follow the procedures in this section to successfully burn your disc depending on the alert that appears, or if one doesn't appear at all.

If "This operation could not be completed (DSPPublishing error -29)" appears

If you're using an image for the DVD menu background, this alert can appear if you moved the file from its original location. Move the file back to where it was located when you first added it to your project, then share to DVD again.

If you can't remember where the file was originally located, re-add it as the menu background image.

Locate the file you want to use as the menu background image.

In Final Cut Pro X, choose File > Share > DVD.

Click Settings.

Click the Remove button (X) next to Background to remove the current menu background image.

Click the Add button next to Background.

Select the file and click Open.

If the file used for the menu background image is in RAW format, convert it to a file format such as JPEG or TIFF, then add it to the project.

If "A re-writable disc, containing data, has been found in the destination device” appears

This alert can appear when sharing your project to an DVD-RW or BD-RE disc with data already on it. If you click OK in the window, but sharing stops at 66 percent, the DVD or Blu-ray disc may have inadvertently mounted in the Finder. This can block your Mac from erasing the existing data on the disc before burning the new project onto it. You might also see an alert stating that the disc is in use.

To successfully share to disc, try sharing again after doing any of the following:

When burning to a DVD-RW or BD-RE disc with existing data already on it, immediately click OK to erase the disc. This prevents the disc from mounting in the Finder.

In the menu, click "Burn Disc Image disc name to Disc" and follow the instructions.

Disk images are also useful for archiving projects as they appear on disc, and if you need to burn multiple disc copies of a project.

If your disc skips on playback, has sync issues, or doesn't display subtitles as expected

If you are using rewritable discs, be aware that some rewritable discs that have been written to repeatedly may have playback issues in some DVD or Blu-ray players. Try burning to a new DVD-RW or BD-RE disc.